Of the 50 biggest employers in the pharmaceutical industry, Teijin Ltd was the company which referred to robotics the most between July 2020 and June 2021. Credit: Shutterstock

Mentions of robotics within the filings of companies in the pharmaceutical industry were 25% higher in the second quarter of 2021 than in Q2 of 2020.

In total, the frequency of sentences related to robotics between July 2020 and June 2021 was 50% higher than in 2016 when GlobalData, from whom our data for this article is taken, first began to track the key issues referred to in company filings.

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When pharmaceutical companies publish annual and quarterly reports, ESG reports and other filings, GlobalData analyses the text and identifies individual sentences that relate to disruptive forces facing companies in the coming years. Robotics is one of these topics - companies that excel and invest in these areas are thought to be better prepared for the future business landscape and better equipped to survive unforeseen challenges.

To assess whether robotics is featuring more in the summaries and strategies of pharmaceutical companies, two measures were calculated. Firstly, we looked at the percentage of companies which have mentioned robotics at least once in filings during the past twelve months - this was 10% compared to 3% in 2016. Secondly, we calculated the percentage of total analysed sentences that referred to robotics.

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Of the 50 biggest employers in the pharmaceutical industry, Teijin Ltd was the company which referred to robotics the most between July 2020 and June 2021. GlobalData identified three robotics-related sentences in the Japan-based company's filings - 0.12% of all sentences. Johnson & Johnson mentioned robotics the second most - the issue was referred to in 0.06% of sentences in the company's filings. Other top employers with high robotics mentions included ICON Plc, Bayer AG and Lonza Group Ltd.

This analysis provides an approximate indication of which companies are focusing on robotics and how important the issue is considered within the pharmaceutical industry, but it also has limitations and should be interpreted carefully. For example, a company mentioning robotics more regularly is not necessarily proof that they are utilising new techniques or prioritising the issue, nor does it indicate whether the company's ventures into robotics have been successes or failures.

In the last quarter, pharmaceutical companies based in Asia were most likely to mention robotics with 0.02% of sentences in company filings referring to the issue. In contrast, companies with their headquarters in Western Europe mentioned robotics in just 0.01% of sentences.